


The Centaur and the Morning Star

by teratorequests (bravelittletoreador)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Centaurs, F/F, Fluff, Terato, Teratophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-27 18:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16707760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bravelittletoreador/pseuds/teratorequests
Summary: A commission for @greeneyedfaunus which I just loved doing.A girl and the centaur woman she’s in love with celebrate an important anniversary





	The Centaur and the Morning Star

You lock your bedroom door and open the window. Cool night wind fills your room with the scent of damp earth and night blooming jasmine, and your heart with desperate anticipation. You put on that floral sundress (though the part of your brain not utterly useless with infatuation tells you thick pants and boots would be more practical) and wait for as long as you can bear- until you are certain your family is asleep- and then you climb out the window and away.

The wet ground feels indescribably good beneath your bare feet, the night air invigorating on your skin, the bright light of the full moon clear as day as you cross the pasture and slip into the shadow of the aspen and oak.

Your practical side was right, the sundress and bare feet were a bad idea. There’s thorns and mud and bugs and you worry that you’re going to arrive a hot, scratched up, limping mess. But not even that can stop the excitement that runs like a river within you, carrying you forward.

You found her just like this the first time. Barefoot, you’d run into the woods over some heart break that had seemed earth shattering then and incredibly petty now. Lost, you’d stumbled into one of her traps. She’d heard your crying and come and set you free without speaking a word, turning you back in the direction of home before disappearing again. But you’d been utterly enchanted by the first look. Her strong arms, her bronze skin, the cool, remote wisdom of her dark eyes. You’d gone back into the woods looking for her the next night, and found another of her traps. She’d looked more annoyed than happy to see you again, but you’d managed to exchange a few words with her that time before she’d sent you home, and you’d learned her name.

“Havasu.”

You didn’t always fall into her snares, but it happened fairly often whether you meant to or not. She was good at hiding them and you were just not terribly observant. At least not for signs of traps. You could spot and identify a cool mushroom or edible plant from a mile away, and no one was better at keeping track of what was what in the garden than you. But when it came to not falling off embankments or tripping in fox holes or stepping into concealed rope snares, you were useless. Luckily, she was never far away, and she made an effort not to use traps that might hurt you. And after the first several times, she stopped sending you immediately on your way and agreed to sit and talk awhile, or walk beside her as she made her rounds, checking and resetting her traps. She was a woman of few words (a shame, you thought, because her voice was lovely) but she didn’t seem to mind listening to you talk as you chattered about your day and your family the tedious boys in town.

And in quiet little fragments she told you that she lived alone, that she’d left her family behind. She told you that her bow was named Luna and that Cygnus was her favorite constellation. She loved to watch the stars, and tended to sleep during the day because she preferred to work by moonlight. She loved spicy food and the sound of rain and stories about myths and prophecies. Her name meant blue-green water. And, one night, after you’d been visiting her regularly for almost two months, she told you that she thought your hair was beautiful. It had taken you nearly a week after that to work up the nerve to kiss her. But she had kissed you back, and undressed you under the stars, and you’d never been so happy in your life.

But tonight is special, and you’re even more excited than usual as you head deeper into the forest, to the place you usually find her.

You spot her first for once. That doesn’t happen often. You aren’t exactly stealthy. But she’s focused on something and doesn’t notice your approach. You take a moment to just admire her, leaning against a tree and smiling.

The moon light shines on her broad shoulders, making silver coins filtered through the oak leaves. It gilds the edges of her short, dark hair. It’s the same shade as that which covers her powerful flanks and her long, graceful tail, which sweeps the leaf strewn forest floor even now. Her hooves dig at the soil as she works at something in her hand, a piece of wood she’s carving with a small, delicate knife. You whistle, and the centaur turns abruptly, reaching for her bow with lightning reflexes, before she recognizes you.

She frowns, putting the knife and the carving away in the leather pouch she wears on a belt around her waist, and trots towards you.

“You must be careful,” she scolds. “I might have shot you.”

“You didn’t even have your bow out,” you say, smiling at her.

“I am very fast,” she says archly, then takes in your dress and bare feet. “Flower, what are you wearing?”

“I thought it was pretty,” you admit sheepishly and duck your head, worried she doesn’t like it.

“It’s beautiful,” Havasu says, brushing your hair from your eyes. “You look lovelier than the moon.”

Your heart thumps in your chest and throbs in the scratches on your legs. Worth it.

“But really,” Havasu takes your skirt in both hands, holding it out to either side critically. “You might as well have worn nothing at all.”

“Is that an option?” you ask playfully. Havasu’s mouth curves into a small smile. She pulls the dress off over your head.

You lay against her back, the night air as cool on your bare skin as her body beneath you is hot. You stretch out, loving the feeling of her moving beneath you, the slow roll of her powerful muscles, the softness of her fur.

“You should sit up,” Havasu chides you gently. “I don’t want you to slip off.”

“You won’t let me fall,” you reply with complete faith. “Not even the king’s paso fino horses ride as smoothly as you do.”

“Well, the king’s paso fino horses are not in love with their riders,” Havasu points out. “Sit up, hold on tight. I want to run.”

You do as she says immediately. She almost never runs when she lets you ride her, and you love it. You squeeze her tight between your bare thighs and wrap your arms around her human torso, your breasts against her back and your chin on her shoulder. She turns her head to smile at you, and to steal a brief, sweet kiss. Then she bursts into a run, sudden as a summer shower. She bounds through the forest like a deer, leaping over logs and stones, the trees whipping past you in a blur of green shadow. The roll of her back between your legs sends a flurry of heat through you. When she first allowed you to ride her you’d had no idea what you were doing. You’d bounced against her back until you were sore and bruised. But once you’d learned to move with her, to rock into her motions and let her rhythm carry you, riding had swiftly become one of the most pleasurable things you could imagine. You press kisses to the warm skin of her shoulder and wish you could stay like this forever.

But eventually the ride ends. She breaks through the treeline on the edge of a still lake. Your favorite spot. On nights like this with almost no wind, the water is like a glass, reflecting the stars.

“You wore that dress because you know what night it is, yes?” Havasu asks as she stands by the water’s edge. You look out over her shoulder at the beauty of the heavens reflected on the still surface and sigh with happiness.

“Of course,” you tell her, kissing her cheek. Your hands slide up from her waist to graze her breasts and you feel her shiver beneath you. She doesn’t often wear anything to cover them when the weather is warm. They’re heavy and full, incredibly satisfying to hold. Her breast and belly and throat are a shade or two paler than the skin on her back and shoulders and the upper side of her arms. Softer and more sensitive too.

“It’s been a year since we met,” Havasu says, and tilts her head back to look at you. “I thought that might be cause for some small celebration.”

“I’d say it’s cause for a party,” you say with a grin. She kisses you, the angle awkward, then manages to get her arms around you and swing you around in front of her- your arms around her shoulders, your legs around her waist- and kisses you properly, deep and dizzying.

“But first,” she says, her lips brushing yours. “A bath.”

And she strides forward into the still water. You catch her small smile as you shriek and cling to her when the cold water hits you.

Once you’ve adjusted to the temperature, it’s heaven to float in the cool water, surrounded by stars. Treading water, you can look her in the eye as you almost never can on solid ground, and kiss her easily, as many times as you like. You can hide your face in her throat, her breasts, and taste every inch of her skin. Your bodies fit together despite how different you’re shaped, and her hands on your skin fill you with a heat that could boil the lake to a mist.

Eventually you return to the shore. She reveals a basket she hid in the trees earlier today and pulls out a blanket you can lie on and a small picnic.

“I didn’t expect you to go to this much effort,” you tell her, delighted. You lay curled up against her side, her breathing a steady motion beneath you.

“It’s the least I could do,” she replies, offering you grapes from the vine she keeps beside her home. “You come all this way just to see me, give up nights of sleep when I know you will have to get up and work in the morning. I can’t even risk walking you home.”

“That’s not your fault,” you say quickly. “My family just… They’re too traditional. If they knew you were a centaur they’d never let me see you again. Not to mention the fact that we’re…”

You trail off, the problem of your mutual gender left unspoken between you.

“Why do you stay with them?” Havasu asks quietly. “You’re old enough to leave.”

You shrug, embarrassed.

“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” you admit. “Leaving would mean a husband or an apprenticeship, and the only one in town taking apprentices is the blacksmith. I mean, you’ve seen me around fire and heavy tools. It’s a bad idea. I could go to the city, but that would mean leaving you.”

“Do you want to go to the city?” she asks, frowning again, that little line between her brows making your heart break. She thinks she’s holding you back. You take her hand immediately.

“No,” you say. “I want to be right here, with you. The city is just a way to escape my family. And I care about that way less than I care about you.”

You turn her hand over to kiss the soft skin of her palm and she smiles, reassured, pulling you into a real kiss. You forget your conversation for a long few minutes, until you are both flushed and breathless.

“I have a gift for you,” Havasu says at last, pressing a last small kiss to your ear.

“I don’t have anything for you,” you say, upset that you didn’t think of a gift, but she just smiles, shaking her head.

“You don’t need to give me something back,” she says. “Not yet, anyway.”

She reaches into her bag and pulls out the little wooden thing she was carving earlier. It’s a bead, though a very big one, and carved with incredible intricacy. It’s all wound about with vines, and flowers that you realize are in the pattern of both your favorite constellations.

“It’s beautiful,” you whisper, running your fingers over it in awe.

“It’s for your hair,” she tells you, sliding her fingers through your long curls. “To fasten the end of a braid. It’s… traditional among my people, to give one of these to the person you love.”

You’re stunned for a moment, your heart racing.

“It’s- it’s not like a ring,” Havasu says quickly. You don’t think you’ve ever heard her stammer. “It’s not about marriage. It’s just… a promise. To cherish one another. To be only for each other. To consider, one day, perhaps, being more.”

Your breath catches and you clutch the bead tight as you kiss her, long and hard.

She holds you even after you finish kissing, her arms warm around you.

“You don’t need to answer now,” Havasu says. “By tradition, you have a year. If you bring me a bead of your own, it will prove we’re promised to one another.”

“I think I’ll need more than a year to make something this amazing,” you say, looking at the bead again. She chuckles, her fingers stroking your side.

“Perhaps I could teach you,” she offers, tentative. “We don’t have time on these visits but, if you were to live a little closer to me…”

“Havasu,” I say, eyes widening. “Are you asking me to move in with you?”

“Only if you truly want to,” she says quickly. “And you would be free to leave whenever you want if you decide you want something else. You could stay with me long enough to save some money and then travel if you liked or-”

You put a hand to her lips to stop her. She doesn’t need to say any more. You kiss her again, brief and warm.

“I would love to.”

When the sky is turning pale she takes you home. Instead of dropping you off where she usually does, she brings you all the way to the edge of the forest. Back in your slightly muddy sundress, you kiss her goodbye.

“I’ll see you again tonight,” you promise her, heart humming with excited plans. You’re not going to waste any time. You’ll tell your parents and pack your things today.

“Till then, my star in the daylight,” Havasu says, and there’s so much love in her eyes that you almost give in and decide to go home with her now and forget your family and your things. But the practical part of you reminds you that boots and jeans really are a good idea for running around in the woods. So you kiss her again instead, and whisper “I love you” into her ear, too flustered to say it any louder. As you hurry away across the field back towards home, you hear her whisper it back.


End file.
